


Nothing Here to Throw Away

by interstitial



Category: Supernatural
Genre: British Men of Letters, Exactly Like Canon, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Passive Suicidal Ideation, Plenty of Hurt/Some Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season/Series 12, Torture, Traumatic Bonding, and/or worse., except better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 05:13:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8191508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interstitial/pseuds/interstitial
Summary: Sam is hard to torture. The space between effective and fatal is awfully small.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Finding Sam](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/232510) by ameliacareful. 
  * Inspired by [awesome untitled ficlet](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/233140) by Semira. 



> Set after the British Men of Letters capture Sam. Written during the S11 hiatus, so there is some canon divergence, though less than one might expect. 
> 
> **Warnings:** This story is gen, insofar as there's no sex in it. The Mature rating is for canon-typical torture and discussion of sexual violence.
> 
> Despite the Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester tag, wincest is not necessarily implied in this story (except by Lucifer, who doesn't count). I'm uncomfortable with the fact that, tagged traditionally, the pairing whose only "sexual relationship" is rape gets the "/" tag, while the pairing that includes a lifetime of loving physical intimacy gets the "&" tag, unless they're attracted to each other's naughty bits. In my view, the relationships in SPN don't lend themselves well to heteronormative categorization. I recognize that my "solution" has its own set of problems though. My apologies.

“How much farther?" Sam asks.

They're on the road, and Sam's been napping in the shotgun seat. His face feels numb where he had his head propped against the passenger-side window, with only a balled up flannel between his temple and the glass. He's stiff and achy all over, much more so than he usually gets when he sleeps in the Impala. He must've been out for quite a while.

Jess looks over briefly and grins. Turns her eyes back to the road, a careful driver. "Almost there, Sleeping Beauty. Feeling any better?"

You'd think that would be an easy question, but it isn't. He has a migraine, like the ones he gets sometimes when he sees the future. Underneath the railroad spike of pain behind his eye, honestly, everything's pretty fuzzy. If this is better though, he must've been in rough shape before.

The catalog of places where Sam hurts is turning out to be extensive. At first he only noticed the migraine, and his leg. The leg- his left one- is somehow both numb and horrifically painful all at once. His calf is cramping something awful, and he's got pins and needles from his toes almost to his groin. And his thigh, jesus. It hurts with that panicky, awful pain that usually means you're bleeding to death and your body wants you in the hospital before it's too late. For a minute he would've almost sworn he'd been shot. Except he looked, and there's not even a hole in his jeans.

But now that he's more awake, he notices all the other things that hurt too. His chest hurts, like broken ribs. The side of his face that wasn't smushed up against the window stings along the cheekbone, and aches down into his jaw. His shoulders burn and throb, one worse than the other. His left shoulder feels like it's dislocated, but he pressed around on it, and it isn't. He might have missed something though, because his hands are numb. His belly-

It's a hopeless task. There are more places that hurt than ones that don't. Dean will check him, make sure there's nothing too dangerous. He'll pour Sam a shot, tell him not to be such a girl, and stitch up everything that won't heal on its own; just as soon as they get to- when they get to...

Where are they going?

Sam looks out the window, and he's pretty sure he's been wherever they are before. There's dense, old growth forest as far as the eye can see. Fallen leaf cover and the bare trunks of downed trees alternate with berry bushes and huge green ferns, in a brown and green patchwork quilt laid out on the forest floor. The blacktop of the deserted two-lane Jess is driving them down cuts a line straight through the center of the trees. And everywhere above them, the sun streams down through the canopy like it's shining through the windows of a cathedral.

It reminds Sam of Whitefish, where Rufus' cabin is, but flatter. It looks a little like New England too, if fewer people lived there.

He can't place it, but he figures Dean will have it all mapped out in his head. Where they are, where they've been, and about twenty different routes to where they're going.

He looks over, and oh yeah... Jess is driving.

Why is Jess driving?

Dean should be driving. Dean should-

Oh.

That's right.

Dean is dead.

For good. Saving the stupid, ungrateful universe. Matter still exists, and Billie will have taken Dean to the Empty by now.

Dean is gone, and the sun is shining, and the earth is turning, and Sam is still alive.

The wrongness of it crashes over Sam, and steals the air from his lungs. He's already used up all his attempts to cope, on the other times Dean's died. Now there's nothing left, and he can't do it again. It pulls on him like undertow, how there's nothing to do, no shore anywhere, only the ocean of his grief.

And then a minute later, it comes to Sam that Jess is also dead. Immolated on the ceiling of his apartment, years ago.

And when he notices he's staring blankly out the window, and he pulls his attention back to the landscape, and thinks idly that it's much too beautiful to be part of the same world as so much death, he suddenly knows where he is. He's in the woods inside his head, where he went after the Trials. So he must be dying too.

_Thank christ,_ he thinks. _Finally, both of us at once._

But then he looks over at Jess.

Her hair is a halo of gold in the afternoon light. Her hands on the Impala's steering wheel, where Dean's should be, are sure and strong. She's singing along to Dean's _Live Bullet_ tape, and her voice sounds like a choir.

But the Jess Sam went to Stanford with had eyes the same color as Sam's own. The eyes of the Jess driving Dean's car are ice blue. And when Sam squints, he can see ripples in the air around her, like heat waves rising off asphalt.

He grits his teeth, does his best not to whimper and draw attention to himself, and slowly tries to adjust his position so he'll be turned to face her, his back against the car door. But even that little bit of movement is nearly beyond him. A moan escapes between his lips, and Jess notices.

She gazes over at him, expression fond and full of concern.

"You okay, babe?" she asks.

Sam freezes where he is. He knows she might only be a part of him, though he can't imagine why he would've constructed her. But he also knows, deep in his bones, in his memory of the burned-out sockets of Kevin's eyes, that she might not be.

"Billie promised I'd go to the Empty," he says carefully. He'd been sure his voice would shake, but it doesn't.

"And you believed her?" One eyebrow goes up, arch, like she expected better of him. "Billie can't have you. You're mine."

So they're not going to pretend then. It's intentional on her part, that Sam can see the ice in her eyes as her grace leaks through the illusion of mortality, the ripples in the air when she beats her wings.

“What're you doing here, Lucifer?” Sam asks, as if it's not obvious. He's too tired for this. Afraid now, too, yes. His heart is pounding, and his hands are clammy with sweat. But he's exhausted anyway.

“You wound me, Sam,” Lucifer says, “Where else would I go? You know you'll always be my favorite. Sure you don't want a rematch? I've still got the rings.”

Sam doesn't say anything. He looks out at the trees as they speed by; Lucifer driving Dean's car through the landscape of Sam's dream.

“What, nothing? Just gonna sit there and let me chauffeur you to your death? Throw me a bone at least, Sammy.”

Sam is wondering about the trees. The leaves are full and green, so it must be summer. His world is ending though. He thinks it should be fall. 

"Or I could throw you one instead. 'Course I'd have to be Nick for that," Lucifer says. She tilts her head coyly. "Did you like me better as Nick? I think I liked me better as Nick. Jess never cut it for the prison bunkmates thing.”

"Whatever," Sam says. His voice is still flat and uninvolved. He can feel his fear in the pit of his stomach, but it's oddly distant. Somewhere along the path between adrenaline response and expression of emotion, his grief takes everything else by the throat, and throttles it. "As long as you're not Dean."

Lucifer studies Sam through slitted eyes.

"I wouldn't make up my mind so fast if I were you," she warns. She's watching Sam slow and lazy, a predator waiting for Sam to bolt. "I'm the only Dean you've still got."

And of course, that's the strike that lands. Of course it is.

In the Cage, it always ended in horror, in Sam screaming and begging until his voice was gone. But in some of the moments in between, when Lucifer-as-Dean would stroke Sam's hair and say _I've got you, it's okay, I've got you,_ the approximation was so close, so almost Dean, that Sam could just lean into it and forget.

Sam isn't stupid. He knows it was inevitable that he'd appreciate the few bare threads of comfort he was offered. But it feels all wrong inside him anyway. And the worst part, which always follows horribly on the heels of his remembering, is the awful suspicion that sometimes Lucifer was a better Dean than Dean is.  
...than Dean _was._

Sam turns his head away, ashamed. It pulls on the muscles of his bad shoulder, and he flinches.

"You were made for me," Lucifer says, "You belong to me, and you always will."

Sam hopes that when Dean was alive, it was maybe not true. But Dean is gone.

-*-*-*-

 

They drive in silence for a while. Or at least Sam is silent, and Lucifer only sings. There's a woman Sam doesn't recognize in the back seat, and she's kind of loud actually, but Sam ignores her as best he can. She wants to discuss something. Sam's not sure what. The pieces of her words fly apart before he can pull any meaning from them, and besides, she's insignificant. Sam has no attention left to spare for her.

She leans forward though, her breath whispers beside his ear. There's a sudden shock of pain, all-encompassing and terrible, and all Sam's muscles seize. He screams, and it's over, but everything that hurt before is even worse now, and there's a spot of fire below his collarbone, another one halfway down his chest. The Impala smells like burning flesh.

He tries to breathe his way through the pain, and it's not Hell, it's still chump change compared to Hell, but it's plenty bad enough. He's panting like he's at a Lamaze class. It doesn't help.

The woman is leaned forward across Sam's seat back, so her face is right up beside his, and her voice is low and intense. Sam can't follow her at all through the haze of his pain, and if he's honest, he doesn't much care. With the way she waits for him though, when it's his turn to talk- patiently, far beyond a socially acceptable silence- and the too many places he hurts all at once, he guesses it's an interrogation. He feels vaguely guilty at how poorly he's holding up his half.

He tries to explain about Lucifer; that it's not the woman's fault Sam is a terrible victim now. He's just been hurt too much already. But she says something sharp, and then Sam's cheek stings, and he thinks in the world outside his dream of dying, she must have slapped him. It's ridiculous. She's obviously not afraid to do him real damage. If she thinks the palm of her hand will help anything, then she's losing her objectivity. He tries to turn around so he can see her better, but he's trapped in the seat belt and can't move, and every time he makes an attempt, it just hurts him more.

"What's she going on about?" he hisses through his clenched teeth, past her, at Lucifer, "Who is she?"

"She's from the British Men of Letters. Lady Chevelle? Fontanelle? I don't remember. Nobility's not my specialty." Lucifer, as usual, is not terribly helpful. "For a High Inquisitor, her Enochian is disgraceful. You're not doing yourself any favors rubbing her nose in it."

Sam hadn't noticed he was speaking Enochian. He supposes it makes sense though. He's been dreaming in it for decades.

"A hundred and sixty-seven years and three months." Lucifer says, and flashes him one of Jess' delighted smiles. “Since the dream where you finally gave up running from me. Remember that one? You were so pretty back then, all infused with my light.”

Since Lucifer’s been topside, Sam’s been dreaming it again, so yeah, he definitely remembers. He’s been waking up screaming, forgetting where he is. The dream is hard to shake; it feels more real than life- Lucifer glowing molten in the distance like the heart of a star; Sam panicked, sprinting for shelter; wherever Sam ends up- Stanford, or the bunker, or some random hotel room or vic’s house- reduced to flat, black glass. And then the slow understanding that there’s no point running, that the outcome is always the same. Lucifer always wins and Sam always burns.

“I know you don’t much like it, Sam, but love's not _supposed_ to be easy. Just look at me and Daddy Dearest. Look at you and Dean.” 

They've come to a clearing in the trees. There's a dirt path, and at the far end is the cabin Sam failed to die in last time he was here. Lucifer parks the Impala on the shoulder and cuts the engine. 

"Isn't that quaint," Lucifer says, "All it needs is the dueling banjos."

She's not wrong. In Sam's memory, the cabin is benign, despite what happened inside. There's a disturbing edge to it now though. There are new shadows under the eaves and in the corners, and the planking is in worse repair. There's a pull from it too that Sam doesn't like. Last time, it was welcoming. Now it's dragging at him, whether he likes it or not.

"I guess a squealing pig or two could also be an improvement. Come on, city boy. It’s time."

Sam reaches for the buckle of his seatbelt.

There's a touch on his shoulder from behind as he manipulates the buckle one-handed, and the woman of letters leans over him again, her arms around him, almost an embrace. She lays both hands on his chest. It's a gentle touch. It wouldn't even hurt if it wasn't for the burns there.

But she says, perfectly understandable, now that Sam's realized he needs to process in English, "Clear," and there's the pain again so bad that for a second, it stops the universe.

Sam has a vision then, or since this whole thing is really a vision, maybe more of an overlay. The sun-drenched forest fades into gray, and there are rough stone walls winding between the trees. The forest floor is made of concrete. Lucifer goes insubstantial and fuzzy around the edges, and when he exits the Impala, there's a rickety table where the driver's seat just was. There are pliers and knives and clamps on the table. Two syringes. A blowtorch.

Another chunk of Sam's memory breaks loose and he catches little fragments of it as it passes by. The burst of fire in his thigh when the woman shot him- Toni Bevell- that's her name. The thunk of his head against her rental's side door when she made the first hard left on their way to wherever they are. Isolated moments of interrogation.

They fade back out though, and the forest reasserts itself. Sam thinks he should probably feel something about it one way or the other, but he doesn't. Besides the pain, he still mostly feels just tired. And if he pries too much at the tired, the ocean of grief is right there underneath it, waiting to swallow him up.

Toni is in the middle of growling something at him. _-finished with you yet._

Sam shrugs the good shoulder. "Nobody ever is. You'll have to wait your turn."

He finishes with his seatbelt and Lucifer comes around the car and opens the door for him, helps him out, grabs Sam's good arm and slings it across her shoulder to help Sam walk.

The process is laborious, and not particularly pleasant. Sam's a lot bigger than Lucifer is when she's dressed as Jess, and he can only take a little of his own weight on the bad leg. He hears the car door slam before they've gone more than a few steps. Toni comes up on his other side.

"Where do you think you're going?" she snaps. She's stalking along beside them in her immaculate pantsuit and pearls. The heels of her pumps dig into the dirt path as she walks.

"Back to Hell, probably," Sam mutters. Lucifer's not actually _in_ Hell anymore, so maybe that's wrong, but she doesn't correct him.

She does start to hurry Sam along though. Her steps get a little faster than Sam's, and she pulls on his arm, where it's draped over her shoulder. It's odd. Lucifer usually takes her time with Sam, likes to draw things out and enjoy herself.

"Where _am_ I going?" Sam asks. Most of him is indifferent. But even flattened by grief, Sam's still a hunter. He can't help picking at things that seems off.

Lucifer rolls her eyes. "Wherever you wanted, if you weren't so stubborn. Cancun, maybe? Dashing big brother and you never did end up taking that romantic beach vacation while you still had the chance."

They're close to the cabin, and the pull at Sam is getting stronger, a constant, insistent command. _Forward, forward._ It's hard not to obey. He tries a smaller step. It's like swimming against a current, but he manages it.

"Oh make up your tiny, human mind already, Sam," There's an irritated frown on Jess' beautiful features. Lucifer tugs hard on Sam's arm. "Anytime you wanna take the stick out of your prissy ass, I'm in the market for a new ride. And until then, let's move the dying thing along a bit. You're boring me."

Sam steels himself and takes the tiniest step he can manage.

His head aches and his memory is full of holes, and whatever was in those syringes makes it surprisingly hard to think straight. But he works it through to its only conclusion anyway. If Lucifer wants him dead- actively wants the body of her best vessel rotting in the ground getting harder to rebuild by the second, and in a hurry too- then she has to be hiding something.

She has to think Sam in possession of all the relevant facts would want to live.

"Lucifer," Sam asks, "Where's Dean?"

Lucifer scowls.

"He's a cloud of subatomic particles in the Empty. Let’s go, Oppenheimer. You're not getting him back this time."

Sam drags his feet to a stop. Lucifer's got one of his arms, and Sam's other arm is useless, but he gestures vaguely with his head at the cabin's rotten wooden door.

"Is Billie in there? I need to speak to Billie."

Lucifer turns on him and glares.

Sam's arm comes off her shoulder. His leg won't hold him up. He falls, and the ground slams into him hard. His leg crumples up under him at a weird angle, and his ribs grate against each other, and the shoulder gets jarred. The pain is blinding. And under and around and through it, the pull from the cabin is still urging him forwards. He needs desperately to sit there in a broken pile for a few minutes and collect himself.

But Lucifer has him by the good wrist, and she's angry now. She's bent over him, and her eyes are wells of blue fire. Her face is a cold mask, and the air smells of ozone. Her wings are half-visible; two roiling hellscapes of oily black void and flashes of lightning.

"Billie’s nothing but a two bit reaper with delusions of grandeur," she hisses. "You'll come with me when I tell you to."

She pulls Sam's arm so it's twisted up wrong against her body, until it hurts almost as bad as the other one. Sam has to struggle up onto his knees to keep it from dislocating too.

But Lucifer's wrong, or lying. Billie pretends to be a reaper, but Sam figured it out almost as soon as they met; that she's Death. And he needs to talk to her about Dean.

"Billie has to take me," Sam says. He can feel the insulating wall of his grief retreating, now that he's worried about Dean, now that there might still be things Sam needs to do. Fear floods in to fill the empty space. He's suddenly cold, and his voice is thin and shaky. "Maybe I do belong to you, I don't know. But Billie has to reap me or it's off."

Sam's dream forest isn't a cathedral of light anymore. The sky turns black with storm clouds and a harsh wind is picking up. Lightning cracks down and breaks the branches off of trees. Lucifer is holding Sam knelt up against her body. She tucks his arm under hers, and grabs a fistful of his hair, forces his head up with it, so she can look him in the eye, so Sam can see how poorly contained the power of her grace is.

"You don't get to pick when you die, Sam."

Sam swallows hard, but he says what he needs to. "If I go to you because I'm yours, then where did Dean go?"

Lucifer stares hard at Sam and blinks. Then a lazy smile spreads its way across her face, and she throws back her head and laughs.

"Wouldn't that be the frosting on the cake?" She's grinning widely. "Satan and her vessel tooling around up here on God's favorite Home Ec project, and Michael and his Sword trapped in the Cage forever? That'd be almost as good as dear old Dad fucking off to another universe was."

She wipes the smile off her face, and looks at Sam with that smarmy false sympathy Sam hates so much. "I assure you though, Dean's not in the Cage."

She's still got Sam pinned on his knees against her body, one hand tight in his hair, and she's petting him absently and stroking his face with the other hand, as if he's a frightened animal. It doesn't feel anything like all the times over the course of Sam's life- when Sam was hurt, or dying, or just afraid- that Dean has cradled him in his arms and done the same. Sam's suddenly not sure how he could've ever thought otherwise.

"Michael's never even been inside your precious brother," Lucifer says, "There's nothing to tie them together."

The wind is whipping past her wings, blowing tendrils of crackling black vacuum out past Sam towards the cabin. They burn like ice where they touch Sam's skin. It hardly seems fair that the weather in Sam's dream is on Lucifer's side.

"Billie or it's off."

"Really, Sam," Lucifer says. She's looking at him almost indulgently, her foolish but beloved pet. The anger's still visible though, lurking just below the surface. "Despite what your ridiculous adventures may have led you to believe, you can't just decide you're not gonna die. Unless you want to be my prom date, your time's up."

But Sam's sure now. He twitches his head in Toni's direction. "The second time she shocked me, the forest disappeared. I'm saveable. I'll do whatever she asks."

He can't turn his head enough to see Toni's reaction, but she's been torturing him- he knows what she wants. It's getting to be his specialty. "You'll do it, right? Keep me alive so I can cooperate?" There isn't really any question. She's restarted his heart twice. She's as stubborn as Sam is, and not done with him.

She steps up beside him, into Lucifer's personal space, all upper class deportment and no-nonsense attitude. Puts her hand on Sam's shoulder.

"I believe it's my turn after all, yes?"

Sam nods.

Lucifer looks at Sam. At Toni, and then at Sam again.

She puts on the petulant pout she uses to disguise real distress. Takes it off, and tries out her ironic half-smile. Takes that one off too, and finally gives Sam the closest thing she has in human form to her true self; the simulacrum of Jess' face left unanimated, as cold and dead as space; a reptile's unblinking, glittering eyes; the blinding light of suns just under the surface of her skin. She unfurls her wings, and they spread out like terror behind her- massive shadows full of fire and void and the edges of knives; a gravity well of everything and nothing, all at once.

"Fine," she says, "I can wait. See you soon, Sam." She reaches out and strokes Sam's cheek one last time. He flinches away, but the cold burns him anyhow. And then she's gone.

The weather clears as fast as it clouded over, and Sam's forest is as sunny and benign as if nothing bad had ever happened in it, or ever could.

Sam and Toni stand in front of the cabin, nonplussed, and then Sam says, "I guess I'd better check inside. There's someone I need to talk to, and then we can go. Are you coming?"

The porch steps creak a little as they climb them.

-*-*-

 

Sam opens the cabin's rotting door and steps across the threshold.

There's a moment of vertigo, like he's falling backwards, a visceral flash of memory of Lucifer inside him as they fall into the hole in the world. And then Sam is sitting, dazed, in the center of a room, with his hands cuffed behind the back of the chair he's in.

He blinks sweat, and maybe blood, out of his eyes. The cabin didn't look like this last time he was here. The walls are rough stone now, the same stone that was winding through the trees after Toni shocked him. The easy chairs and the cozy fireplace are gone, and there's only a rickety wooden chair and the table covered in tools that Sam saw in the Impala. Sam's legs are bound to the chair legs. The concrete floor is cold against his bare feet. His body is a blaze of pain.

That's all good. A little early, but basically according to plan. It all goes in the _probably real_ column of the endless tally Sam keeps in his brain where normal people hang their picture of life as a continuous whole.

Billie's not there, and that's fine too. If he's alive, he can always look for her later.

Lucifer is back though, and that gives Sam serious pause. She and Toni are fighting. An actual physical battle of kicks and punches that Sam has somehow missed the beginning of. It seems unlikely.

And worse, there's Dean.

Dean is across the room, one wrist locked to a chain hung from the ceiling. He's trying to pick the lock, but he's not doing a great job of it, because he's mostly watching Sam.

"Hey, Sam. Sammy, You awake? I'm right here with you. Everything's gonna be fine."

He's reciting his _comforting Sam_ litany. It's convincing. He sounds strong and competent, but also thoroughly panicked, just like Dean really does when Sam is in trouble. The whole thing is surreal and impossible though, and it's moving much too fast for Sam to follow. So he shouldn't feel comforted. Sam's probably still dying, and Billie isn't here, and Lucifer has already beaten Toni into submission. And then Lucifer turns towards Sam, gun in hand, and she's not Jess, she's Mary Winchester. She's Sam's dead mom, and what the fuck is that all about. He definitely shouldn't feel comforted.

But Lucifer- or Mary- puts her gun away and kneels down beside the chair that Sam is bound to, and starts working on his handcuffs. And Dean has gotten himself free, and his hands are all over Sam, doing post-hunt triage.

"Ah Sammy, you look like shit, bro," Dean says and pats Sam's face, smoothes his hand through Sam's hair. Sam knows he's supposed to make a joke now, but he's too overcome. Dean's hands feel like home.

"Dean," Sam says. His voice comes out a broken croak. He feels stunned stupid, can't think what he wants to say next. "Dean."

"Yeah, Sammy. That's me. I'm right here." Dean's arms go around Sam, and he rests his chin on Sam's shoulder- unerringly on the good shoulder, the one that won't hurt when it's touched.

Sam's life has been impossible for almost two centuries. So today is no different; whatever. He doesn't even ask, just leans into Dean, and accepts.

~

**Author's Note:**

> There it is- my very first fic ever! And a girl only has her first time once. So please be gentle with me, and send kudos and comments to let me know you'll still respect me in the morning. :D
> 
> ...oh who am I kidding about the gentle thing. Clearly that refers to some other author's preferences who is not me. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> I *would* still appreciate the kudos/comments tho.


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